


Undoing

by DoreyG



Category: Benjamin January Mysteries - Barbara Hambly
Genre: A rescues B from the underworld or afterlife, Addiction, Dante's Inferno References, Developing Relationship, M/M, Masturbation, Suicidal Thoughts, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:15:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23837440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/pseuds/DoreyG
Summary: Hannibal finally succumbs to his illness. Fortunately for him, Ben isn't quite ready to let go.
Relationships: Benjamin January/Hannibal Sefton, Past Benjamin January/Rose Vitrac, Past Hannibal Sefton/Patrick Derryhick
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5
Collections: Hurt Comfort Exchange 2020





	Undoing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [venndaai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/gifts).



> I absolutely loved your prompts, Venndaai! And just had to write an extremely long treat for this. As you can probably guess by the length of this, this got really out of hand and I really hope you enjoy it.
> 
> The theology here is a big mixture of Dante's Inferno, Orpheus and Eurydice and general christian theology all mashed together. The quotes here are mostly from my copy of Dante's Inferno, with some Shakespeare scattered in.
> 
> I've put pretty extensive warnings in the tags, but just so you're aware: there's extensive discussion of addiction here, as well as extensive discussion of suicidal ideation and self-esteem issues.

"You can save him, you know."

"No I can't," he said dully, staring down at the body of his friend on the bed. Hannibal was always small in life, but in death he was a tiny crumpled thing that stabbed at the heart. "He's dead, Olympe. Even if I was the best surgeon in the world, there's no medical treatment for him now."

"I don't mean _that_ , brother mine," Olympe said scornfully. And then, softer as he didn't even glance up at her in favour of staring mournfully at Hannibal's withered corpse: "Ben… Do you believe in the afterlife?"

"Of course, if you've lived a good and pure life heavenly paradise awaits afterwards," he recited flatly, absently reached out to touch one of Hannibal's cool dead hands. "The only problem is that he's still not here, still not with me or his other friends, so that's not quite a balm."

Olympe made an annoyed noise, as impatient of his moral hang-ups as ever. "I didn't mean it to be a balm."

"I did find it a little odd, that you were suddenly counselling me like a priest when you've always been entirely disrespectful of the matter before. " He studied Hannibal's still features for a long moment, marvelling at the lack of animation. Then finally brought himself to look up, meet Olympe's solemn eyes. "What _did_ you mean?"

"You always cared for Hannibal," she said softly, instead of immediately answering him. "Didn't you?"

"Was it that obvious?" He said, his weak attempt at a joke falling miserably flat. "Of course I did. He was my best friend, for years. He was the first person who properly reached out to me, when I arrived here. He… Even prevented me from committing an unforgivable sin myself, a few times."

The memory of cheery fiddle music cutting through the night, stopping him in his tracks when he was on the very point of stepping off the edge of the dock and plunging into the dark.

"It was always a bit more than that though, wasn't it?" Olympe asked softly, and met his confused gaze with her own stubborn stare. "You always loved him too, didn't you? And I don't just mean as a friend, I mean as how Paul loves me."

"Don't be crude! He was only my friend, and nothing more. To think otherwise is just-" His vague attempt at offended rage trailed off, he found his gaze dropping almost inevitably back to Hannibal's waxen features that would never become animate again. "Just…"

Olympe patiently waited him out. And then, when no further words were forthcoming, gently reached out and laid her hand over his. "Accurate?"

"There was always something there, I'm not entirely sure what," he whispered, still staring down at Hannibal instead of meeting his sister's far too canny eyes. "He wanted me, I always knew that much, and I think… No, I _know_ that I didn't mind his interest. But there always seemed too many barriers. We were both men, we were different colours, he was dying and I couldn't go through what happened with Ayesha again."

Olympe waited him out again. Strange, how he had never thought of her as kind but would desire nobody else to help him in this situation.

"Except now he's dead," he said softly, dully as he felt the same shaking pain that'd stabbed him upon seeing Ayesha hanging dead and helpless from the bed. "And even though we didn't do anything, even though we didn't confess a single word to each other, I am going through what happened with Ayesha again. And it hurts just the same as it did before."

"Ben, look at me," Olympe said firmly, so firmly that he had no option to drag his eyes up from the corpse of his friend - his maybe love - and fix them upon her. "I'm not asking this to get some gossip, as some ghoul wanting to feast upon your misery. Do I really look like our mother?"

"No. As I recall, that was her problem with both of us." He gave her a weak smile, well aware that it didn't meet his eyes. "Why are you asking it, then?"

Because there might be some way to save him," Olympe said, quite simply like she wasn't dropping a boulder right into the centre of his reality. "But it isn't for the faint of heart. It'll require you to suffer, and to be braver than you've ever been. It'll require you to remember how much you care for him, every single step of the way."

He stared at her, struck speechless and numb with confusion.

He spluttered, and waved his hand at Hannibal's quite obvious corpse. He wasn't sure whether to be furious or heartbroken, but he was pretty sure that he could manage both. "What are you talking about? He's dead, of the disease that has been wracking him for as long as we've known each other. There's no way to change it, no medical intervention that can help-"

"I'm not talking about a medical intervention," Olympe interrupted. There was obvious annoyance on her face, but out of love for him none of it shook her tone. "I'm talking about a spiritual one. I know you've always struggled with what I do, Ben, but do try to keep up."

And he should hold on to his anger. He should rage against the heavens, yell at her for daring to lecture him when his heart was lying dead in front of him yet again, clench his fists and maintain the core of rage for as long as he possibly could-

Tears spilled from his eyes, and he raised one hand to swipe at them helplessly. "I'm sorry, I'm being foolish. Please tell me what you mean?"

"You're not being foolish, Ben. I know what death is like, it has a way of gutting you and gutting you until you feel like little more than a corpse yourself." Olympe immediately reached for him, took his broad shoulders and held him until the flow of bitter tears slowed "...There is a way to walk into hell itself. To cross the boundaries between life and death, and fetch back those who should not have been lost."

He remained silent, swallowing weakly and taking a certain amount of strength from her firm grip upon him.

"It is a hard spell to assemble, and takes an awful lot from the caster," Olympe continued, her tone more hesitant than he'd ever heard it. "But it takes even more from the walker. You'll have to face hell, Ben. You'll have to go through every level, see every element of Hannibal's psyche, face every truth you've tried to ignore. And then, when you've made it all the way through, you'll have to face Hannibal. You'll have to trust him enough to lead him out of hell, and not look back even once."

He drew in a deep breath, and met her eyes as levelly as he could. "Laying aside what I do and don't believe… You'd really be willing to do this, for me?"

"You're my brother, Ben." She smiled at him. And, to his profound surprise, he saw tears standing in her own eyes. "You'd do the same for me. Have done a time or two, as I recall."

He smiled back at her, weakly, and drew in a deep breath. If he had any sense in his brain he would dismiss this. Would remember the teachings of the church, that it was no man's place to meddle with the decision of god. Would remember medical teachings, the endless dead bodies he'd handled with no hope of resurrection. Would remember basic logic, take strength from the disapproving flash of his friend Rose's eyes from behind her spectacles.

But then he looked down at Hannibal's body again. So still on the table, never going to smile at him or laugh at him or quote absurd chunks of Shakespeare ever again.

"Alright," he found himself saying, as if in a dream. "How do we get started?"

\--

**i. Limbo**

He stood in fog, thick and choking. It was the worst he'd ever seen, in either Paris or New Orleans. He couldn't see more than a foot in front of him, and even then the only thing he could glimpse was a blank of rolling grey. He couldn't hear anything beyond the amplified sound of his own breathing, loud and echoing in his ears. He couldn't feel anything, beyond slimy cold pressing against every bit of exposed flesh. It was like being wrapped in a blanket, a particularly unpleasant blanket that'd been dipped in the Seine before it made its way to him.

Maybe he should turn back, return to Olympe's house and warn her of this unnatural fog. He didn't know why he'd even left in the first place, he should've begged a bed overnight instead. It would've been the sensible thing to do, especially considering…

Hannibal.

He drew in a sharp breath, barely avoided choking as the definitely unnatural fog attempted to surge into his lungs. Because he hadn't left Olympe's house, not really. He was currently lying in a spare bedroom, his hands folded across his chest and silver coins pressed across his eyes. He was currently putting his life at risk, his sanity at risk, all for another cold body just a few feet away from him. He was currently -

"In the land of the dead," a soft, listless voice finished his thought. As if his emotion, his raw despair, was laid out for anybody passing to see. "You always were smart, it's not a surprise that you figured it out so quickly."

He spun wildly, almost stumbling and falling in the thickness of the fog. He could barely believe it, he'd been expecting it to be so much harder than this,but just a few steps away from him stood a familiar figure. Slim and careworn, with hollow eyes and bony shoulders and that greying moustache still upon his face.

"Hannibal," he gasped, and took a few stumbling steps closer to the man. "You won't believe how glad I am to see you. I thought that we'd lost you forever, I thought that there was no chance of getting you back, I thought… Well, a thousand things that are too depressing to dwell on. How much do you-?"

Somehow it wasn't a surprise when his hand went right through the man's arm, only a crushing disappointment.

"You aren't Hannibal," he said, resigned - by a lifetime of suffering - to the realization.

"I am in some ways," The wraith said, in a tone utterly devoid of any human passion, and stared down at his translucent hands with an expression of mild curiosity. "I'm not in others. Why did you come here, Benjamin January?"

"My friend, my love, died and I wish to get him back. I need to get him back," he said, bitter resignation still weighing heavily upon his shoulders. "Is this hell?"

"Almost," the wraith informed him, and tilted its head in a movement so familiar that he felt bitter and reluctant tears spring to his eyes at the sight; at Hannibal, standing before him so close and so distant all at once. " _There, as it seemed to me from listening, Were lamentations none, but only sighs…_ "

" _That tremble made the everlasting air,_ " he murmured, taking up their old game automatically. Quote for quote, respect for respect; the both of them on the same level, and loving every moment of it. " _And this arose from sorrow without torment_... We're in Limbo?"

"The first circle," Hannibal, or the wraith that was not entirely Hannibal, confirmed with a listless shrug and a dispassionate look. "Hannibal, the true Hannibal, is at the bottom. You will have to walk a long way to get to him, and in the process see-"

"Why is he at the bottom?" He interrupted, a sudden spark of futile rage rousing him. "He wasn't a bad man, not by any means. Why does he deserve-?"

"He thought he deserved it, I thought I deserved it, and so it's the way it is." The wraith shrugged again, even more listless than before. He was like Hannibal in the depths of opium, uncaring for all the world around him. "Hannibal, the true Hannibal, is at the bottom. You will have to walk a long way to get to him, and in the process see many truths. Will you follow?"

He drew in a deep breath. Closed his eyes for a long moment… And then opened them, and gave a determined nod. "What other option do I have?"

\--

**ii. Treachery**

"So," he asked, as they walked through the thick and choking fog. "How does this work?"

There was a long moment of silence, and he wondered if the strange shade of Hannibal would even care to answer him. But then the man, the ghost of a man, heaved a soft sigh and finally glanced at him again. "How does what work, Benjamin?"

"All of this, " he said, and tried his very best to ignore the dullness of the shade's tone and the dead look in his eyes. "How am I supposed to save you, and lead you back to life?"

A strange, utterly humourless smile curved Hannibal's lips. It was an odd, a disturbing, sight as the man usually took pains to be constantly speaking and teasing and never still. "I find it interesting that you speak of 'saving' me."

"I'm not sure why, as it's the only reason that I'm here," he said, well practiced at being patient by now. There were some, very limited, things that swallowing your tongue for your entire life came in good for. "Hannibal, you are meant to be my guide. I don't require a lot of information, but I would appreciate some. "

Hannibal remained silent for another long moment, bizarrely as he had never once been silent in life, and then sighed again and respectfully inclined his head until his hair fell down over his shoulder. "We walk."

"Is that it?" He asked, hiding his incredulity by the skin of his teeth. 

"We walk through the fog, and we see what our walking disturbs." Hannibal turned that blank glance on him once more, And he found that he had to fight the helpless shudders going across his skin. "And then we will see whether you actually wish to save me, or rather to leave me here in the dark."

He stared, utterly taken aback and not a little angry about it. "Why would I ever want to leave you in a place like this? Hannibal, you are my best friend -"

"In life, you were never certain that I’d go to heaven. Oh, there’s no need to deny it. I saw it all on your face." Hannibal, the false Hannibal as he was starting to think of him, lifted his bony shoulders in a listless shrug. "Well, I didn't. I ended up here instead, and people who end up here tend to have a darkness inside that can't simply be waved away. You're going to discover things about me that you won't like, very quickly."

"I'm pretty sure that I know most of those things already, " he said, narrowing his eyes. "And I still like you-"

"We'll see how long that'll last, " the wraith Hannibal interrupted, and turned back front again. "Especially now. _Thou hast thy feet upon the little sphere_... "

" _Which makes the other face of the Judecca_ ," he said automatically, so used to the game was he, and then paused and narrowed his eyes again. "You're really quoting Dante at me to prove your point? Hannibal, I don't think-"

"You're really sure about this?" A man's voice, with a soft irish accent,interrupted him mid demand.

He'd never spoken to Patrick Derryhick in life, had only seen the man's corpse briefly, but somehow he recognised him instantly. He was twenty years younger, far less portly and far more alive, and a certain vitality shone from him like rays from the sun. He was currently looking a touch nervous, his hands clasped before him as he stared across the shabby hotel room at...

 _Oh_.

Hannibal was standing across the room, staring down at a rather empty looking suitcase. The man was also twenty years younger, clean shaven and healthy in a way that he hadn’t been even when they’d first met, but he would’ve recognized him anywhere. He had the same overlong hair, the same red lips, the same quicksilver darting energy that burst from him no matter how overwhelming the situation.

“I don’t have any other choice,” Hannibal said grimly, and closed the suitcase before him with a firm _click_. “It’s either this, or drive everything I love into the ground because I apparently can’t help myself from making the worst possible decision in every single situation.”

“Surely there are some other options,” Patrick tried again, and he felt a certain amount of fellow feeling for the man even though they’d never actually met face to face. In his voice was the resignation that came after a thousand times of trying to talk Hannibal out of sacrificing himself for others. “Surely you can do something else than leave your lands behind, leave your wife behind, leave your child behind, leave _me_ behind…”

“Patrick, _please_ ,” Hannibal said, and spun around sharply to face him. There was genuine anguish in the fiddler’s eyes, like this was the hardest moment of his life. “I have already driven my lands half to ruin. I have already broken Philippa’s heart. I am already on the edge of making my son hate my name forever, and he’s barely more than a baby.”

“And me?” Patrick asked softly, taking a faintly pleading step towards him. “You haven’t ruined anything with me yet, Alec.”

“It’s only a matter of time,” Hannibal - or Alexander, as he was at the moment in the flush of his heady youth - said wearily, and gave his friend an imploring glance. “I’m starting to think, Patrick, that I ruin every single thing that I touch. And the amount of times that I’ve touched you, it can only be a matter of time before everything goes disastrously wrong.”

“That is by no means certain,” Patrick said firmly, his tone dangerous as he took a step forward. “Just because you fear that, just because you’ve allowed the darkness in your head to convince you that you’re poison, doesn’t mean that you should abandon us, _betray_ us by leaving us all behind!”

There was a long moment of silence, after that ringing proclamation.

“Patrick,” Not-yet-Hannibal said, his face gone a sickly shade of pale. “Please, you know it’s not like that. _Quaeris, quot mihi basiationes ; tuae, Lesbia, sint satis superque._ ”

“ _As great as is the number of the Libyan sand that lies on silphium-bearing Cyrene_. I know, Alec, I do know,” Patrick said softly, finishing the Catullus quote in English with the same ease that he always had. He stared across at his friend, at his more than friend, for a long few moments of despair more… And then drew in a deep breath, swiped at his eyes and drew himself up again. “I just don’t want you to go, that’s all. None of us do.”

“Unfortunately,” Hannibal, for he could only call the man Hannibal when he saw that old familiar pain in those coffee dark eyes, said softly. “I don’t have any other choice in the matter.”

Patrick gave him one last longing glance, and then gave a brusque nod and drew himself up. He saw, in that moment, why Hannibal had entrusted so great a secret to the man. “I will arrange the boat, then, and see you tonight so we can put the plan into action. Please, try to get some rest until then.”

“I will do my best.” Hannibal attempted a shaky smile, one that immediately dropped as Patrick took a businesslike step towards the door. “Patrick… I _will_ miss you, you know. More than anything.”

Patrick paused for a long moment, his hand on the door. But then he straightened again, and didn’t look back as he opened it and stepped in a businesslike manner out into the corridor. “I will miss you too, my friend.”

In the man’s absence Hannibal immediately wilted, all the vital strength that he used to sustain him seeming to fade in the absence of an audience. He took a few stumbling steps back, and sunk down onto the bed. He scrubbed those fine boned hands, the ones that he’d watched toying with the fiddle more times than he could count, over his face. He breathed in deeply, and blinked hard, and took in a deep breath as he lifted his eyes to scour the room for a distraction...

And looked up, and met his eyes for the first time.

“Oh! I didn’t see you there,” Hannibal said, his words stuttering with obvious shock, and then paused and gathered himself and gave him a narrow eyed stare. “Largely because I wasn’t expecting you to be there. I don’t mean to be rude, amicus meus, but do you think that you may well have wandered into the wrong set of rooms?”

He considered how to approach this for a second, how he would approach this if it was another white man accusing him of invading his private rooms unlawfully… But then forced himself to relax. This was something akin to a dream, and so he had nothing to fear. Besides, even in his very youngest form Hannibal was not the kind of man to take against him just for being a black man far too close to his saintly presence. “My apologies, I did not mean to intrude. But, as it happens, I am not really intruding because I am not really here to intrude.”

“You seem pretty solid to me, amicus…” Hannibal trailed to a halt, and then narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t used, not at all, to seeing thoughts flash so obviously across his friend’s face. “Wait, is this an opium hallucination?”

It was as safe an explanation as any, and might well have even been the correct explanation considering how little he understood what was currently happening. He spread his hands slowly, smiled in what he hoped was an encouraging manner.

“I’ve never really had one before. I must be further along the poppy path than I at first thought,” Hannibal mused, the brief terrified anger that had crossed his face at the intrusion replaced with a whimsical thoughtfulness. “And I thought, that when they did start to happen, they’d be a great deal more unpleasant than a handsome man suddenly appearing in my rooms and smiling at me… But it’s no matter. I’m glad, that I only have to worry about my own mind instead of awkwardly attempting to expel an intruder.”

He stared for a second, very taken aback by Hannibal referring to him as handsome so casually. Quickly gathered himself, when the man arched an enquiring eyebrow, and forced himself to carry on instead of getting distracted by what could’ve been. “Was that Patrick Derryhick, who you were just talking to?”

Hannibal blinked for a moment, at the sheer obviousness of the question, but then gave a casual shrug and settled back more comfortably on the bed. “The one, the only. Unique and irreplaceable in every way.”

“You’re obviously very close,” he said carefully, cautiously. He knew that Hannibal would never hurt him, even while he was still young and known as Alexander, but the wounds of lovers ran deep and he didn’t want to tear at them without due cause. “So what were you arguing about? Are you planning to do something that he disapproves of?”

“Yes, an act of terrible self interest and base treachery that Dante himself would happily damn me for,” Hannibal said, quite casually, and flashed him an utterly charming smile as he was still blinking over the mention of Dante. “To be exact: I am planning to drunkenly throw myself off a bridge tonight. But not to die; oh no, life is far too sweet for that. I plan to swim to a nearby waiting boat, drag myself out of the water, flee far away, change my name and be presumed happily departed by everybody who knows me. I’m also planning to grow a moustache, though that may be more of a long term goal.”

“And that is an act of base treachery?” He asked, arching an eyebrow. His heart both hurt and sang in his chest, to see Hannibal alive and as irreverent as ever. “I presume you must have very low and dishonest reasons for such an act, then.”

“I... Not exactly.” Hannibal hesitated for a long second, biting his lip. And then heaved a sigh, and gave him a far more honest and direct look. “You might well have overheard what I said to Patrick, but I will happily repeat it. I am a drunkard, an opium fiend and a general shame to all of polite society. If I remain here, hopelessly entrenched in my wicked ways, I will drag everybody I love down with me. I thought it best to escape, before it comes to that sorry point.”

“They love you, you know,” he said very gently. Knowing, even as he said it, that he was far past the point of changing Hannibal’s mind and didn’t entirely wish to in the first place.

“I know, that’s why I’m leaving,” Hannibal said solemnly, and glanced down at his delicate hands as if the weight of his head had suddenly become a little too heavy to bear. “Because I love them too, all of them. And, for the first time in my life, I have decided that it’s best to stop being selfish and to start protecting people instead.”

“Then I don’t think you’re a traitor at all,” he said, very softly, and waited until Hannibal’s coffee dark eyes - so similar to those that he’d known, if just a little less tired - met his once again. “In fact, I think that you’re a very brave man.”

“It’s nice of you to say that, amicus meus,” Hannibal said, just as softly, and gave him another brilliantly flashing smile that didn’t quite reach the echoing sadness in his eyes. “Entirely untrue in practically every way, but still nice. I didn’t know my brain still had such kindness in it.”

\--

**iii. Fraud**

" _Such sin unto such punishment condemns him,_ " the wraith that was both Hannibal And not Hannibal said softly as the fog started to thin yet again. " _And also for Medea is vengeance done._ "

" _With him go those who in such wise deceive,_ " he finished the quote, and looked over at the scrawny man as he marched slowly onwards. "Slipping loose from the proper order yet again. Does this place have any organisation whatsoever?"

"Is your mind properly organized at every moment, even the most traumatic?" Hannibal retorted, but mildly. Even this not quite right version of him seemed slow to temper. "This is more based on Hannibal's perception, remember. Things will not be as your learning taught you."

"I always did wonder why fraud was one of the lower circles, when every single being has told a lie at some point, " he said thoughtfully, and glanced over at Hannibal again as the man gave a low snort. "Why are we here?"

"I just told you," Hannibal said, and turned to give him a mildly concerned look. It was the most emotion he'd seen on the wraith's face, ever since he'd walked into this strange and deathly place. "Is the fog starting to muddle your brain? He would not want you to forget yourself for him, I would not-"

"I didn't mean that," he interrupted, absently using his most soothing tone. He didn't like to see Hannibal agitated, even the strange ghost version of his good friend. "I meant that Hannibal was never a particularly fraudulent person. If anything he was an open book, all of his suffering and learning open for anybody to see."

"I thought you knew him, " the wraith said, staring at him with such sad eyes. "He lied about his identity, his existence, from the day he set foot in America. He deceived everybody he knew with every breath he took, and never even thought to change that. "

"As I said," he snapped stubbornly, only a little uncertainly. "Every human lies."

"Ah, but do they lie as much as he did? As we did?" Hannibal gave him a sad, melting look. Turned front again and spread his hands as he continued to walk into the fog. "Witness."

And the fog parted, and revealed.

It was a tiny room, the kind of which there were hundreds around the docks; old wood, largely broken windows letting in the whistle of the breeze and downright filth on the floor. The man sitting at the desk was much the same, an exact copy of the many guards in New Orleans that'd allowed themselves to be corrupted by lack of time and lack of interest; his hair was greasy, his fingernails were dirty and his eyes were greedy as he took in the man standing across from him.

Hannibal looked younger here. Not as young as in the previous vision, but still lacking the ten or so years that'd aged him before his death. His moustache was full brown with only the slightest sprinkle of grey, he stood full upright instead of in a painful hunch and his breathing was largely even. There was a sparkle in his eyes still, when in the months before his death there'd only been a dull bleakness.

"What is your name?" The guard asked in broken English, quite obviously not knowing - or not caring for - the difference between an educated Irishman and an American backwoodsman. This was obviously a man from before the days of the reign of Shaw.

"Hannibal Sefton, sir," the younger Hannibal answered, switching the conversation respectfully to French. And only he, January, who knew Hannibal so very well, could detect the moment of hesitation before the new name came out.

"You come from England?"

"From Ireland," Hannibal corrected gently, a small smile on his face. It was the kind he wore at every ball, when trying to ingratiate himself with sweet ladies who might well give him a little extra money for his charm.

"There is a difference?" The guard asked without interest, and carried brusquely on as Hannibal narrowly managed to repress a wince. "Are you here for business, or trade? We have many fine establishments, if you are interested,and the slaves here-"

"I am not interested in slaves," Hannibal interrupted sharply, quickly hid his disgust before the guard looked up at him in mild confusion. "I have not the money for them, or for trade. I am but a simple musician, who is looking to start a new life."

"You won't be able to start a new life without coin," the guard snapped, narrowing his eyes at Hannibal in open suspicion. 

"I said that I didn't have enough coin for fripperies, " Hannibal said smoothly, again with the same casual charm he employed on ladies at the balls. "When it comes to necessities, however, the case is rather different…"

He moved forward, blocking his vision for a moment, and there was the unmistakable clink of money. When Hannibal stepped back again the guard looked a lot more cheerful, and his pockets bulged in the most obvious of ways. "I apologise for the misunderstanding, sir. Now, do you have any family with you?"

"No," Hannibal said, and gave a smile that seemed to cost him some vital part. "I have no family."

"Any friends?"

Hannibal spread his hands, in much the gesture the other version of him had used to clear the fog, and smiled with a barely hidden sadness in his eyes. "No, I currently lack those too."

"Do you have anywhere to stay, then, sir…?" The Guard asked innocently, eyes glittering so obviously with avarice that only an idiot would've missed the danger that laid just underneath.

Hannibal was most certainly not an idiot, for all that he sometimes lacked sense. He hesitated for half a second, and then gave his most ingratiating smile and made a strange little bow. "If you give me just a second to gather my bearings, my good man, I would be happy to hear your suggestions."

"Excellent," the guard said greedily, and hurried to his feet and - from there - quickly to the door of the room. "Just let me, ah, gather a few companions - other friends, for you to get to know - and I'll be right back to guide you to the best possible place. You can trust in me, sir."

In his absence Hannibal let out a hollow snort, and scrubbed a hand through his hair. The smile dropped from his lips, the sparkle from his eyes, to be replaced by a dull tiredness that he'd seemed to find so much harder to hide in the months before his death. He stared into space bleakly for a long few moments, and then heaved a heavy sigh and turned on his heel-

And startled, as their eyes met across the room yet again.

"My apologies, sir, I didn't see you there," Hannibal said slowly, one hand still pressed to his chest as if he was desperately trying to control the fearful pound of his heart. "Granted, neither did he… Do I have the honour of speaking to a ghost?"

"No," he said gently, wanting to assuage Hannibal's fear as desperately as he ever did. "I'm not dead, if anything I'm the most alive person here."

"What a strange thing to say, " Hannibal murmured, but did seem to calm a little under his steady gaze. His hand crept away from his chest, he straightened again as he regained just a little of his famous confidence. "I would assume that you were a sneak thief, but you look rather too well put together to be anything of the sort. Which leaves…"

Any other man would assume that he was a slave, and dismiss him without even a thought because of it. He waits patiently for Hannibal to prove him wrong, yet again.

"Another opium hallucination?" Hannibal assumed wearily, and heaved a heavy sigh at the same time as he heaved his bag - his familiar fiddle quite obviously inside - up onto his back. "They're becoming more frequent, and worryingly familiar. Well, at least you're more attractive than most of them."

"Thank you," he said, amused and wistful all at once. If only Hannibal had been bold enough to say that to him in real life. He doesn't know how he would've reacted, but at least they would've had the chance of getting somewhere before- before…

"I'd love to stay and chat, but I really must get going before the guard comes back," Hannibal interrupted his sorrow, already marching towards the door with the air of a man on a mission. "You know, I really do think he means to murder me and steal all the money I have in the world. It's really most impolite."

"He's an obvious and thoroughly reprehensible villain," he agreed softly, and then was surprised as the next words came out of his mouth almost without his own volition. "Which makes it odd, that you still feel so guilty about lying to him."

There was a long moment of frozen silence.

"Oh, so you're one of _those_ opium hallucinations," Hannibal said softly, his eyes briefly wide with guilt, and slowly shook his head. "It's not odd at all. The only thing that is odd is that you don't already know that, considering that you come from my own head. "

"Humour me for a moment," he said, deciding that explaining the truth of the matter, which he barely understood himself, would take too much time and complicate matters horrendously besides. "Why should you feel guilty about lying to a man who you're never going to see again, and who almost certainly means to rob and murder you besides? "

"Because it is a lie," Hannibal snapped, that same ferocious guilt in his eye as before. "Because I'm not Hannibal Sefton, not just a harmless travelling musician looking for an optimistic new life like so many other foolish innocents. I'm a traitor, a liar and the worst kind of fool. I don't even deserve to be here, lying to this quite probably murderous man; I deserve to be dead in a ditch."

"But you're not, " he said firmly; hating to see his friend, his love, so obviously so despairing and despondent. "You're alive, standing in front of me right now. And that's a good thing."

Hannibal gave a sickly swallow, stared at him through eyes bruised by a lack of rest and lack of care. It hurt his heart, to think of how often he'd seen Hannibal look at him exactly like this. "Is it?"

"Of course," he said, even firmer than before. "You're a survivor. You're the bravest, boldest, smartest man that I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. You deserve to live just as much as anybody else, and you should feel no shame for doing so. After all, people do much worse things every single day just to survive. If you're damned, then we all are. "

Hannibal stared at him for a long moment more, disbelieving this time, and then cracked a slow and tentative smile and took an uncertain step closer to him. "You really are a lot more handsome than the usual hallucinations."

"Glad to hear it," he said, and smiled helplessly in return.

\--

**iv. Heresy**

"What is this?" He asked the shade of Hannibal, as they kept walking through the strange and fog shrouded land.

Hannibal, not Hannibal, gave him a faintly confused look. It was one that he'd never worn in his living life, and the unpolished nature of the expression left him looking young and largely unformed. "I thought you knew by now, Amicus Meus. _Through me the way is to the city dolent; Through me the way is to eternal dole_."

"The land of the dead, yes, I remember," he said impatiently, covering his sudden feeling of tenderness for Hannibal's unarmed state with a businesslike brusqueness. "But what does that actually mean? Is everybody wondering through this version of hell, forever?"

"Is everybody trampling through my head, you mean?" Hannibal asked, and gave a brief smile that finally made him look - startling and sudden - like himself again. "No. Hell is unique, and personal. Each person tortures themself in their own individual way."

"Is this some kind of time travel, then?" He pressed, trying to harden himself once again. It was difficult, he never had been able to resist such raw happiness on Hannibal's face. "Is Hannibal, are you, reliving the most painful moments of his life again and again and bringing me along for the ride?"

"Not… In precisely the way you mean." Hannibal frowned for a moment, but didn't halt his slow walk through the fog. It was strange to watch him, in life he'd been reduced to a painful stumble by the end but in death he still moved with the fluidity he'd possessed when they'd first met. "We are reliving my life, yes, but no actual change in time is occurring. It's an illusion."

"If that's the case…" He frowned in turn, drew his eyes away from Hannibal's swaying hips and reminded himself that this was not the time to be lusting after a ghost. "Then are we inside your mind in some way, walking through your feelings and memories?"

"That may well be the best way to describe it, yes." Hannibal looked at him with active pride for a long few moments, before his ghostly expression faded to dispassionate distance again. "What is it that the immortal bard said… _Hell is empty and all the devils are here_."

"In your mind, " he said softly, and it was only the knowledge that his hand would go right through that stopped him from reaching out to try and take Hannibal into his arms. "You always were too hard on yourself, you always tortured yourself far more than any person ever should."

Hannibal gave him an incredulous look, a flash of his old personality breaking through the distant ice once again. "Are you really criticising me for that sin?"

"Well, perhaps it is one we both share," he admitted, and gave Hannibal a weak smile through the fog. "Yet another thing we have in common, if you want to look at it optimistically."

"Hm," was Hannibal's only dubious response, as the fog started to clear around them yet again and weak light started to trickle through. "We're coming to another circle, another memory. _O banished out of Heaven, people despised!_ "

" _Whence is this arrogance within you couched?_ " He finished, sliding back into their old game as easily as ever even though they were playing it whilst walking through the fields of hell. "Heresy, really? I know that you never had much use for religion, Hannibal, but I don't think-"

"He's a nice man," an old familiar voice, shot through with warmth and joy, interrupted him mid offended protest. "If a bit naive."

He was suddenly standing in a small kitchen, battered and with a certain lack of dignity that would have led his mother to immediately turn up her nose and even Dominique - with all her fine manners, and brute cheerfulness - to look a little queasy. He placed it, after a moment of confusion, as his friend Rose's kitchen in her old school before her livelihood had been destroyed by awful luck and awfuller malice. The lady herself was sitting by the stove, an amused expression upon her face. Hannibal was sitting across from her in a heap, obviously at the cheerful point of the bottle.

"Yes, Hannibal," Rose said tolerantly, leaning down to poke at the fire in an inquiring manner. "You already said."

"It bears repeating, my fair Athene!" Hannibal chided her, but with a playful joy in his voice that made her smile again when with any other man she would've bristled. "I've never met anybody like him. He's a surgeon, and a musician, and a man of supreme learning besides. He can quote Plato and Homer and Shakespeare, and all at a speed to rival me. He has such a warm laugh, and kind eyes, and shoulders that would be a downright pleasure to clutch at. He's sensitive, and kind, and smart-"

"All of those things," Rose interrupted , in a gently mocking tone. "And naive too? How can this be!"

It had obviously been meant as a joke, a gentle jest at a friend carried away in the first hasty haze of attraction, but Hannibal still hesitated for a long moment before he replied. "He's been through a lot, bright eyed Athene, about as much as you or me. His wife died back in Paris, you know. And now he's been forced to come back to a country where he has not a single friend, only two terrifying sisters and a mother who apparently acts like he doesn't exist half the time."

Any other person would've hurried to explain themselves, or quickly changed the subject. Rose, being the woman he knew and cared for so fondly, only gave Hannibal a thoughtful look. "And how does that make him naive? If anything, it sounds like it'd make him the opposite."

"He still hopes, " Hannibal whispered, genuine confusion in his eyes as the smile fell from his face to be replaced by a pinched frown. "He still hopes, and dreams, and believes that there's some higher power watching over us all. He has his dark moments, of course he does, but even then… He still seems to believe that there'll be some kind of justice at the end of it all."

A brief expression of concern passed over Rose's face, but she hid it well. It was a dance they had in common, if Hannibal saw even the briefest moment of worry from them he'd generally act the fool until he drove himself to the point of collapse. "A strange thing, I will admit, and not one that I entirely understand myself. But all of us have a little faith, Hannibal, all of us have something that we believe in."

"I don't think I do anymore," Hannibal confessed, not with any particular inflection but rather vaguely as if it were merely a depressing fact of life that he'd long since accepted. "What is the point of believing in something, when it's only going to break your heart in the end?"

Rose hesitated for a long moment, but obviously knew as well as him that there was very little that could be said to Hannibal in this state. Eventually she heaved a heavy sigh, and got to her feet in a plain and businesslike manner. "I think that's enough wine and good company for you. Let me get you a blanket, you can sleep down here and leave when it gets light."

Hannibal gave her an absent smile, and tracked her brisk progress to the door with undeniably morose eyes. When she was gone he watched for a second more and then his shoulders drooped, he sighed softly and looked briefly down at his hands in an attitude of utter despair…

And then looked up again, right into his eyes.

“Oh,” he said, looking a great deal less startled this time, and still made the effort to pull himself up from his boneless slump into a semblance of something closer to a man. “Another hallucination? And I was having such a good night.”

He stepped forwards, hesitated for only a second before kneeling down in front of Hannibal and reaching to brush the hair away from his face. “Were you?”

“Oh, of course. You’re a hallucination, I don’t have to lie to you.” Hannibal studied him with those dark eyes for a long second, accepted the ghost of a touch naturally. It was strange to see, when in life he had generally resisted most signs of tenderness assiduously unless several bottles in or too high on opium to care. “It wasn’t the best… Although, to be fair, also wasn’t the worst. It went downhill once I got off the subject of your shoulders.”

He felt his entire body flush at the casual confession, had to fight to keep himself steady instead of simply lapsing into it. “You’re attracted to me?”

“Of course I am. To the real version of you, that is.” Hannibal gave him a look like the matter was obvious, hoisted himself a little higher in his chair and shot him a rueful smile. “Not that I’d ever actually admit it, to anything other than a hallucination. It’s still illegal, as far as I know. People have such small minds on the subject of genuine pleasure.”

People had small minds on the subject of everything, it was a point on which he and Hannibal had often had cause to agree. He had to gather himself for another moment, before he could formulate a reply. “If you did tell him…”

“Don’t be foolish. I know that you’re a hallucination, but surely even the fevered parts of my brain have more sense than that,” Hannibal didn’t say it particularly sharply, there was still a small smile upon his face, but a dark warning flashed in his eyes. “It’s not that I think he’s particularly prejudiced, already he seems far too good a sort for that, but… If he rejected me it might well ruin our budding friendship, and if he said yes to me it would soon be a decision that he’d come to regret. No, best that I keep it just between the two of us.”

“What do you mean, that it’d be a decision that he’d soon come to regret?” He asked, a great deal sharper than he intended judging by the way that Hannibal’s eyebrows went up. “You’re not that bad a person, he’d be lucky to have you.”

“What a strange hallucination you are,” Hannibal said, staring at him like he was the strangest thing on the planet. “There are a thousand reasons why he’d come to regret it. The appalling society we live in, for one. The fact of my illness, for another. My utterly abysmal personality, for a third. Need I continue?”

“Others have made it work in more difficult situations before-” He started to argue, stubbornly.

“Weren’t you just listening to my conversation with the enchanting Madame Vitrac?” Hannibal interrupted him, with a note of steel in his tone that he’d rarely had cause to hear before. “The root of the matter is that he is a person that still believes in things, that is still strong and brave enough to believe in things no matter how much life has thrown at him. While I am a person who believes in nothing, who was too weak to hold on to any faith at all through the ravages of a cruel and uncaring life.”

“You’re not weak,” he whispered, and brushed Hannibal’s hair away from his sweat slicked face yet again. “Hannibal… You’re really not. Everybody responds to suffering differently, everybody responds to life differently. I managed to keep my faith, but it doesn’t really matter if you don’t. Sometimes it’s not about faith, sometimes it’s just about putting one foot in front of another until you’re out of the darkness.”

“If that’s true, I’m the most depressing tight rope walker that anybody will ever see,” Hannibal said shortly. But there was a new glitter in his eyes, this one not a warning but rather the slightest threat of tears. “I appreciate you trying to convince me that I’m a good person, it makes a difference from the usual pursuits of my hallucinations, but it’s really not true. I’m nothing, compared to you.”

“You’re one of the best people I’ve ever met,” He said, and met Hannibal’s tear-filled eyes with the most direct gaze he could muster. “Hannibal… You’re everything.”

\--

**v. Gluttony/Greed**

“Are you realizing now?” Hannibal asked, as they walked on through the fog filled place. “The sheer weight of the task you’ve taken upon you? I feel that there’s a Shakespeare quote for this too, although I can’t quite remember it at present…”

“That’s because your mind is currently stuck on doom and gloom, the words of the great bard may be somewhat beyond you in this state,” he said absently, and attempted his best to draw himself up from his miserable and thoughtful pile. “I’m realizing how little you think of yourself, I must admit. I always thought that it was a problem, but never to this degree.”

“Oh,” Hannibal said, and looked confused for a long moment before he managed to gather himself too. “After all that he - I - did, all that he - I - lived through… It became impossible to think well of myself. I was just a person who had somehow managed to survive all that was thrown at me, through sheer luck rather than any sort of talent.”

“As I said to him, you, back there.” He took in a deep breath, stared at the side of Hannibal’s face with a certain brutal determination to be heard. “Sometimes that’s all you can do. It doesn’t make you a bad person, to still be standing after catastrophe. It just makes you a person, one who deserves to be respected just the same as any other. One who is just as good, as any other.”

“Tell that to the cockroaches,” Hannibal said grimly, and kept staring ahead. Not absently, though, but rather like he feared what he’d do if he allowed himself to stop moving - stop desperately fighting for his existence - for even a moment. “I never did understand what you saw in me, you know.”

“A friend,” he said, gently. “More, if I’d ever allowed myself to acknowledge it while you were alive.”

“You deserved better,” Hannibal informed him, his voice starting to shake just slightly. “You deserve better, right now, than walking into the mouth of hell just to try and save somebody who doesn’t deserve it. A washed up fiddler with scarce looks, scarce health and a scarce personality. A man dying from the moment you met him, and doing everything he could to hasten the final blow. A man who abandoned everything he ever cared for; family, truth, faith, even his own body.”

“You couldn’t help that,” he said firmly, starting to grow agitated at the dark self-hatred in Hannibal’s single visible eye. “You especially couldn’t help the last one. There was nothing that you, yourself, could’ve done to stop yourself from _dying_ , Hannibal.”

"I could've tried harder not to hasten it," Hannibal murmured, staring into space for a long moment. And then visibly shook himself and stared up at him, January, with the faintest ghoul of a smile. " _For the pernicious sin of gluttony…_ "

" _I, as thou seest, am battered by this rain._ " he finished softly, and frowned down at Hannibal in mild confusion. "Or fog, as the case more accurately may be. But what does gluttony have to do with…?"

“Come on, Sefton,” a familiar voice said, one of the few American accents that he knew intimately. “Help me out a bit here. I can’t leave you to die out here, Ben would never forgive me.”

They were on the street just outside Hannibal’s usual attic rooms, at a time of night where he’d never been able to bring himself to set foot in the swamp. He saw, in the dim light cast by one of the few unbroken lamps in the vicinity, the lanky scarecrow form of Abishag Shaw supporting a considerably smaller and weaker form with a surprising amount of difficulty.

“I’m trying my best, fierce Nemesis,” Hannibal replied to Shaw, blinking up at him in his usual opium dazed way. “It is a little hard to coordinate my legs at the moment, however, due to the quite marvellous quantity of alcohol that I have consumed.”

“I can see that, Sefton,” Shaw answered wearily. And, with a show of considerable effort that he could not forbear a wince at, hefted Hannibal up onto the first step of the rickety stairs and started to attempt a most fearful ascent. “And I know that being meek and biddable is not usually in your nature, I really do, but I would really appreciate you helping me out here. So we don’t break both our necks, which would quite possibly piss Ben off more.”

“Of course it would piss Ben off more,” Hannibal said, sounding confused, and by some miracle managed to coordinate his legs enough that the next few steps passed easily instead of as some death defying nightmare. “He _likes_ you, Shaw. If both of his best friends died he wouldn’t be very happy about it, I can tell you that much at least.”

“Aw, shucks,” Shaw said, sounding genuinely pleased at the thought. He’d been putting in a lot of effort before, a downright Herculean amount to tell truth, but he seemed to exert an extra bit to bring Hannibal to the balcony at the top of the staircase and just a little bit closer to his rat infested room. “You know, Sefton… He really does like you too.”

“Thank you, ferocious Nemesis, I am aware of that,” Hannibal slurred, seeming amused by the awkward attempt at conversation as the two of them rested against the wall in preparation for the next Odyssey. “I don’t know exactly why he does, but… I am aware of it.”

“Lots of people like you,” Shaw continued stubbornly, hesitating for only a moment more before shoving a shoulder back under Hannibal’s armpit and starting to haul him along the disrepaired balcony. “Madame Vitrac, the girls here, various coffee sellers around New Orleans… Everybody wants to spend time with you, everybody wants to see you well and happy.”

Hannibal remained silent for a long moment, though still tried hard enough with his legs that they actually made progress along the balcony instead of collapsing in some uncoordinated heap. “I’m not entirely sure where this is heading, Shaw.”

“I know you can’t help burying your head in the bottle,” Shaw said slowly, very deliberately. It was the clumsiest he’d ever seen the man, awkwardly trying to have an emotional conversation with a drunken fiddler at past midnight in the worst part of town. “Or burying your head in Opium, or burying your head in both. But it seems to me, if you’ll forgive me saying, like you have a lot to live for. That if you did raise your head and look at the world around you, you’d see only good things.”

“I do forgive you for saying,” Hannibal said softly, and obediently propped himself up against another door as Shaw reached his room and fumbled briefly with the lock. “You’re wrong, but I forgive you for saying it.”

“In what way am I wrong?” Shaw pressed, giving him a narrow eyed look as the door swung open and he immediately stepped back to take up his burden again. “I know it’ll be hard, you can hardly think otherwise when you work in my sort of profession, but it might well be worth it. To experience the world fully, with your friends or the girls here or Ben… I know you didn’t choose this, but you could still choose otherwise. You could still be happy.”

“Again, you’re wrong,” Hannibal said softly, allowing himself to be carted across the room and dumped down onto his thin mattress. “Not about my ability to choose, _It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves_ , but… In your assumption that I’ve not already chosen.”

“Not that Shakespeare shit again,” Shaw said resignedly, in the tone of a man long used to hearing obscure quotes, and crouched down by Hannibal’s side to give him one last brusque check over for injuries. “And you truly expect me to believe that you’ve chosen all this? Living in a whorehouse attic, dying of consumption and seemingly unable to reach for even the tiniest shred of happiness while you still can?”

“Of course I do,” Hannibal said, and gave him a smile that was obviously meant to be encouraging but instead simply looked unhealthy upon his sallow face. “Some people don’t deserve happiness, Shaw, you should know that better than anyone. I’m one of those people.”

“I do know that,” Shaw said thoughtfully, sympathetically, and brushed Hannibal’s hair back into a slightly less chaotic position before rising to his feet again. “I’m just not quite sure about the second part. I’ll get some water for you, just so you don’t wake up to your brain dribbling out of your ears tomorrow morning, and then I have to be heading off to deal with some actually undeserving folk. You want anything else, while I’m gone?”

“Some peace and quiet?” Hannibal murmured softly, shutting his eyes in an obvious dismissal.

“Eh, I think all of us would like something along those lines,” Shaw said softly, sympathetically yet again, and turned on his heel to the door. “I’ll be right back,”

In Shaw’s absence Hannibal let out a low groan, and turned over in his bed. He remained silent for a long moment, still enough that he thought the man may well have dropped into a drunken stupor, and then let out a loud groan and forced himself blearily up to his elbows…

And looked up, right into his eyes.

“Oh,” Hannibal said drowsily, and then gave a faintly fond smile - one that made his heart skip a beat, even though he should’ve known significantly better - and twitched his hand in a vague attempt at a wave. “I was expecting some kind of hallucination. It’s nice to have a handsome one, for once.”

“Ha ha, very funny,” he said wryly, and took up Shaw’s position besides the bed. Except for Shaw it had been a place of simple friendly concern, while being so close to Hannibal’s face seemed significantly more intimate for him. “Such a pity that this devastatingly handsome hallucination is about to call you out.”

“Call me out?” Hannibal gave a mock frown, and then snorted a laugh at his attempt to be serious. “I’ve never really duelled anybody before, let alone a hallucination. Are you even capable of having a second, considering that you’re technically inside my own head?”

“No, I meant-” He heaved a sigh, leaned in to brush the greying hair away from Hannibal’s forehead yet again. Hannibal closed his eyes as he did so, and let out the kind of happy sigh that stabbed helplessly at his heart. “I’m starting to get rather tired of you constantly insisting that you don’t deserve happiness.”

“You’re starting to get rather tired of the truth, then. Which rather proves that you are a hallucination, because the real Ben prizes the truth above all other things.” Hannibal blinked his eyes open again, stared up at him drowsily but still with a certain solemnity to his face. “I don’t deserve any sort of happiness, and there’s no point in pretending otherwise. What I deserve is to be alone and unloved forever, and eventually die at the bottom of a bottle with nobody to mourn my passing.”

“Don’t say that,” he said, sharply enough that Hannibal actually blinked at him in shock. “Why do you think that you deserve that, because you love alcohol? If that was the case half the people in this town wouldn’t deserve happiness, and they certainly seem to think that they’re entitled to it.”

“I deserve it for many, many reasons. The abandonment of my wife and child, the frequent disregard for my bosom friends, my general debauched attitude towards precious life…” Hannibal’s face hardened slowly, the carefree drunkenness fading quickly into one of his far darker moods. “But, since you mention it, yes. My choice to bury myself headfirst in alcohol and opium is one of the more prominent reasons why I should be denied anything good.”

“It’s hardly a choice,” he said, and heard his own voice shake with anger and something close to genuine fear. “Hannibal, you have consumption.”

That hard look remained on Hannibal’s face, that bleak darkness in his eyes. “I am aware.”

“I know for a fact that you started to dull the pain,” he said, trying to sound level instead of on the edge of weeping for his closest friend. “And continued to dull the pain, for that matter. And by the time you thought to stop it was far too late. I worked in medicine, Hannibal, and still do as often as I can; do you really think I haven’t seen such cases before?”

“I doubt that you have ever seen a case as bad as mine,” Hannibal said flatly, like he believed such arrant ridiculousness to be the absolute truth and nothing but. “Because I happily crawled into both bottles, the alcohol and the opium. I happily swallowed anything I could, and in the process cheerfully forfeited my own life.”

“You haven’t forfeited it yet,” he whispered, stabbed again - this time, by the painful knowledge that in his own time Hannibal really had forfeited anything. “Besides, I thought you said you weren’t allowed happiness. Aren’t you contradicting yourself now?”

“No,” Hannibal said sharply, and closed his eyes and turned his head stubbornly away once again. “Because I was allowed happiness once upon a time, did _have_ happiness once upon a time, and look at what a hash I made of it. Best to cut myself off from the matter altogether, I think.”

\--

**vi. Violence/Anger**

"Addiction doesn't work like that," he said angrily, striding to catch up with the wraith Hannibal yet again.

"Doesn't it?" Hannibal looked at him dispassionately. Or, more accurately, with eyes that wanted to be dispassionate but instead held the spark of despairing rage. "Which of us here was the addict, Amicus Meus?"

"Which of us here is the doctor?" He retorted, both annoyed and saddened at Hannibal's determination to tar himself with the worst possible brush. "It's not a matter of wanting to destroy yourself, or a matter of being greedy. It's a sickness, it's an inability to stop."

Hannibal stared up at him, his lips pressed together. He looked, if anything, actively annoyed at being denied the opportunity to castigate himself. "Is that really what you think?"

"It's what I know, because it's the truth," he retorted again, actively annoyed in turn. Hannibal, to him, was the sun and it was an active pain to see the sun trying to dim its own shine. "I've seen it so many times, in so many ways. Breaking an addiction isn't a matter of snapping your fingers and bucking yourself up, if it was you would've done it already. "

"Would I?" Hannibal asked, his lips still pressed together and his eyes still narrowed and an expression of angry despair writ clear across his face. "What if I told you, Ben, that I didn't want to stop? That I did want to destroy myself as quickly as possible?"

"That's not-" the breath caught in his lungs, horribly. He had to fight not to reduce to the level of a terrified child, and inform Hannibal of what his own darkness was. "Is that really true?"

“You know where we are now, Amicus Meus?” Hannibal asked, and weakly spread his arms wide - like some sort of awful showman - as he stared in mute horror at this sudden revelation. “ _Not foliage green, but of a dusky colour, Not branches smooth, but gnarled and intertangled_.”

“ _Not apple-trees were there, but thorns with poison,_ ,” he whispered, completing the quote with a sickening lurch in his stomach. “Hannibal, please. I know what it's like to think you have no hope, I really do, but…”

“I can understand wanting to hasten your death, believe me,” Kentucky Williams’ dusky drawl, just as rough as he remembered it, interrupted his valiant plea before he could even complete it. Before he could even try to force it, desperate and longing, into Hannibal’s unhearing ears. “But it’s never as good an idea as you think it is.”

They were in Hannibal’s usual bedroom, the little barely inside corner of a slum that he called home despite all sensible advice to the contrary. Kentucky Williams was sat on a chair besides the vague pile of sacking that could only optimistically be called a bed, her usually free and straggly hair tied back in a sensible knot. Hannibal was lying on the sacking itself, one arm weakly thrown over his face. From the light he could just glimpse through the shattered glass of the window, it was that time in the middle of the day where very few people were about and those that were weren’t exactly interested in company of a carnal nature.

“As much as I appreciate your advice, and am sure that it was kindly meant,” Hannibal said, muffled into the underside of his arm. “I’m not quite sure why you’ve decided that now is the best time to give it?”

“I have nothing else to do,” Kentucky Williams informed him, quite obviously not taking his slight spikiness to heart. It was likely that she heard worse on a daily basis, considering both her occupation and the location of her business. “I can understand not enjoying your life, I don’t think anybody who lives here really does, but at a certain point you have to make a choice.”

“A choice?” Hannibal murmured, still muffled. He didn’t sound incredibly interested in the answer, but rather resigned to being forced to continue in this conversation anyway.

“Either live the best you can, try your best to actually face up to life instead of hiding your head and ignoring anything bright whatsoever,” Kentucky Williams said, still incredibly matter of fact in the way that all women of her occupation tended to be when they were off the job. “Or actually take concrete action to get out. Existing in this weird in between place ain’t gonna do you any good, or anybody around you.”

“You’ll forgive me if I’m being rude,” Hannibal said, and finally shifted his arm so that he could glare up at her more directly. “But it feels rather strange to be given this advice by a prostitute, who lives and works in the Swamp herself. Do you really have the moral authority to lecture me on such a matter?”

“Probably not, I’m not a priest,” Kentucky Williams said, actually seeming cheerful. Even at his spikiest, Hannibal was a great deal gentler than most of the men in the city. “Or even a believer, really. I’m only speaking as somebody who keeps going, who keeps actually facing up to life no matter how rough it gets. Not saying I’m an inspirational story, or anything-”

“That, and I hope you will take my apologies in advance for this slur on your good character, would be grossly inaccurate at best,” Hannibal said mildly, only the slightest note of steel entering his tone.

“-But at least I’m still standing.” The woman peered down at him for a long moment, and then let out a filthy snort and lifted her shoulders in a slightly dismissive looking shrug. “And, I hope _you’ll_ take my apologies in advance for this… What’d you say, slur on your good character or some shit like that?, but I’m certainly doing better than you at this present moment.”

Hannibal didn’t react much to that, he didn’t seem to have the energy to do so, but he did wince a little. His head lowered from its position held barely upright, and thudded back onto the pillow with a heavy sound of defeat.

“Consider this not as an insult, or anything, but as a kind of wake up call,” Kentucky Williams continued, not unkindly but with the certain matter of factness of a woman used to delivering bad news. “If you’re doing worse than a cut price whore in the worst part of town, then you must be doing pretty damn badly. Shit or get off the horse, Hannibal, there ain’t any other options.”

“You know, I’m pretty sure that’s not the saying,” Hannibal said mildly, but judging by the paleness of his face her pointed words had absolutely found their mark. “...What if I can’t stop? What if I don’t know how to stop destroying myself, after all this time.”

“Eh, I’m just here to give some friendly advice.” Kentucky Williams said, cheerful again now that she’d imparted her great wisdom and detonated a few lives in the process. “I don’t have any actual solutions. Cut price whore in the worst part of town, remember? Think I’m the, what d’you call it, _illustration_ for do what I say and not what I do.”

“Yet another way in which you’re right,” Hannibal said weakly, and summoned up the weakest smile. It was the kind of smile that couldn’t have even fooled a particularly stupid child, or even an American banker looking for property in the centre of town. “What on earth would I do without you, and your charming sisters?”

“Die in a gutter, probably,” Kentucky Williams said, and gave him her very brightest - and thus most disturbingly ghoulish - smile. “Get eaten by a possum, or a particularly daring gator. All that fun stuff.”

“Indeed,” Hannibal said wearily, and flung his arm back over his face as she continued to grin at him with her mouth only half full of teeth. “Would it be alright if you went away now, radiant Aphrodite? I’d like to resume treating my daily hangover with the only effective cure. Namely, peace and quiet and a lack of depressing lectures.”

The woman took this dismissal gracefully, again as probably one of the gentler dismissals she’d suffered in her short life, and leaned down to peck his cheek in farewell. Judging by the businesslike glance she cast around the room as she left, she’d be back as soon as Hannibal was properly unconscious to take any money he had on him as payment for her goods and services. 

In her absence Hannibal laid there for a second more, weakly, and then gave a heavy groan and flopped his arm back to his side. He stared at the ceiling for a long moment, listless and lacking life to a degree that he’d never thought possible even while staring at the man’s corpse, and then groaned and rolled weakly over onto his side…

And looked across the room, right into his eyes.

“I really should’ve expected you,” Hannibal said, completely matter of fact this time. Obviously the hallucinations had become a regular fact of life, something to be dealt with much as you’d deal with bad weather or a particularly annoying cold. “Another witness to one of my more humiliating moments, how absolutely lovely.”

“She did overstep her boundaries a little,” he said, and stepped across the room until he could crouch down by the side of Hannibal’s bed. “But…”

“In her own, socially careless, way she was absolutely right,” Hannibal groaned, tried to prop himself a little further on his elbows and then gave up and fell back to the bed in a boneless motion. “You don’t have to tell me, I’m already quite happily torturing myself without any kind of intervention.”

“Hannibal,” he said gently, and reached out to briefly rest his hand over the calloused and frail one of the fiddler’s. “Are you trying to kill yourself with drink?”

“And opium, can’t forget the opium,” Hannibal said bleakly, and frowned a little at his touch. He wasn’t entirely sure why, and it didn’t seem entirely polite to ask whether it was his presence or lack of presence that was troubling the other man. “And… I don’t know. No in some ways, yes in some others. It’s complicated, Amicus Meus, as all of life seems determined to be.”

“Complicated in what way?” He pressed gently, trying not to let the pain of seeing his friend suffer so badly taint his words. “Can you elaborate at all?”

“Considering that you are a mere figment of my mind, a secret desire conjured up by pain and medication, you shouldn’t need any elaboration.” Hannibal flopped his head towards him, his long and pretty hair unspooling over the pillow, and gave a ghastly approximation of a smile. “But I am ever kind, and ever unable to resist even a reflection of Ben, so I shall attempt to indulge you. I do not actively seek to end my life.”

“That’s good,” he said encouragingly, trying not to become too struck by the thought that Hannibal was as weak to him as he was to Hannibal.

“Is it?” Hannibal said, only frowning at his attempt to be supportive. “I find myself unwilling to let go of the few glories of life, scared of the unknowable black that waits beyond. I cannot face what must be, what _should_ be, calmly but instead find myself cringing from it like a base coward. Seeking to bury my head in the sand, and hope that it takes me slowly from life without any action on my part.”

“What are you saying?” He snapped, angry and terrified and all the more angry because of the terror. “Hannibal, it is not an act of cowardice to not want to kill yourself. In fact, it’s the opposite-”

“You’re wrong,” Hannibal said, actual fire in his tone, and glared at him with those dark eyes that’d been so frequently gentle - so frequently dazed past the point of passion - in life. “Because it’s not that I don’t want to kill myself, it’s not that I actually want to _live_ , it’s just that I don’t have the base courage to actually go through with it.”

He was stuck speechless, a numb ringing in his ears. All he could do was stare at his friend on the bed, the man’s weak body draped in a position far too reminiscent of the last position he’d seen his wife in.

“Kentucky Williams, that sweet Venus, was right in more ways than one,” Hannibal continued, his voice softer now and close to exhaustion. “I am constantly seeking oblivion in the nearest bottle, or the closest intake of opium. But it’s not just a temporary oblivion that I seek, but a permanent one. I choose not the sharp knife, but rather the slow slippage of days. I sit on the horse endlessly, hoping that it’ll buck me off and end it all. I cling to the few bright spots, I cling to _you_ , and try my hardest not to show how much I long for the end of it all.”

“The end of it all?” He asked croakily, clutching Hannibal’s hand in his as hard as he could.

“When I no longer have to remember all the things I’ve done.” Hannibal blinked hard, but despite his desperate action tears still started to spill from the corner of his eyes. “When I no longer have to be a burden, to all those I love the most.”

He remained silent for a long moment, hurting desperately but unsure what to say.

He took in a deep breath, and raised his other hand so that he could clasp Hannibal’s in his own and hold him as tightly as he could from harm. “You are not a burden, Hannibal.”

Hannibal let out a hurt sniff, didn’t seem to have even the strength to lift his other arm and swipe the helpless tears from his face. “But-”

“You are not a burden,” he repeated, firmly, and squeezed the man’s hand - his own going half through it with the force of his regard - until Hannibal’s eyes fell dazedly shut again. “And I know that words alone can’t convince you of that, I have tried and failed for years, but… I am here. And I will remain by your side, forever and ever, until you realize that you carry all of us too.”

\--

**vii. Envy**

“You aren’t a burden,” he said fiercely, marching after Hannibal through the ever thickening fog.

Hannibal spared him only the briefest glance, his dark eyes like wounds in his face, and kept moving at a ceaseless pace. It was like he thought he'd outrun all his pain, if he just moved fast enough. "So you have said."

"So I have meant!' He said, angrily, and in his rage forgot the obvious limitations of Hannibal's current state and reached out to grab his arm and halt him. "And I meant the other things I said too. If I have to spend the rest of my life convincing you that you are not a burden, that you are the exact opposite of a burden, then I will!"

To his considerable surprise his tactic worked, at least partially. His hand still went halfway through Hannibal's arm, but the other man was somehow forced to judder to a halt and reluctantly turn back to him. The look in those dark eyes was painful to witness. "You are the smartest man I know,Ben. I really don't understand how you can be so wilfully obtuse in this particular area."

"I am not the one being wilfully obtuse on this subject, " he retorted, a mixture of rage and pain and fear rising up in his chest and choking him with the force of it. "Hannibal, you must know-"

"Listen to me, Ben!" Hannibal interrupted him, eyes glittering with something that could've been genuine anger and could've been genuine tears. "All I have done, ever since I met you, is drag you down. You rely on me to protect you, and I get drunk and lose all my wits. You ask for my support in dangerous situations, and I inevitably stumble and collapse at the first hurdle. You trust me, with your life, and I repay you by cheerfully tossing my own away at every opportunity. You care for me, more genuinely than anybody else ever has, and I throw it back in your face again and again. "

"Hannibal…" He took in a deep breath, squeezed his eyes shut and desperately tried to convince himself to calm down just a little. "The day we met for the first time, I was about five seconds away from throwing myself off that pier and joining my wife in the black. It was only your music, your company, that stopped me. "

Hannibal fell silent for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was more softly reminiscent than angry. "I remember. You looked so sad, so lost, standing there in the dark. Even then, I desperately wanted to see you smile."

"You saved me," he whispered honestly, and opened his eyes so that he could stare at Hannibal's sad face once again. "And that's what you've done for me every day since we met, Hannibal. You've treated me as an equal, you've made me laugh, you've made me happy. You met me when I was at my very lowest, my very darkest point of despair, and led me back to life with your music and your passion. You're everything to me."

"I don't know why you're so kind to me," Hannibal said softly, staring up at him with morose confusion written across his face. "You shouldn't be. You wouldn't be, if you knew me down to my core."

"I know you better than anybody else," he said firmly, and even dared to reach up and brush some of Hannibal's greying hair away from his face. "And I still love you. I'll always love you, no matter what."

"So you said. " Hannibal uttered a humourless bark of laughter, and stepped back from his embrace in one jerky movement. "But we'll see. _The undiscerning life which made them sordid…_ "

" _Now makes them unto all discernment dim_ ," he finished , again absently and took a desperate step after Hannibal's retreating form. "Wait… _In whom doth Avarice practise its excess_? Hannibal, what do you-?"

"You really shouldn't torture yourself like this," a familiar voice, one as close to him as his sister Olympe, said in a tone of gentle critiscism.

They were sitting in the front parlour of Minou’s stylish cottage, the same room that he’d been frequently shooed out of when more well-heeled visitors had come to call. It was obvious that some kind of party was going on, there were people crowded everywhere and a general atmosphere of bonhomie that had him smiling a little even in the midst of his despairing rage. Dominique herself was standing over Hannibal, a teasing smile on her face but a genuine worry in her eyes. Hannibal was sitting in front of her, his body turned towards her obediently but his eyes fixed ceaselessly on something across the room.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, beauty of the ages,” Hannibal answered her, barely seeming to pay any attention to her words when they were quite obviously a distraction from his ceaseless obsession. “I am having fun at your incredibly fine party, no kind of torture is involved.”

“Hannibal,” Dominique said sternly, and gathered her skirts so she could kneel down before him. “You aren’t having fun at my incredibly fine party, you aren’t _present_ at my incredibly fine party at all. You’re busy staring at my brother, and his attempts to flirt with Madame Vitrac.”

 _Oh_.

He remembered this party now, hazily but with a certain amount of focus. It’d been a few years ago, long enough distant that he’d still been half-heartedly pursuing Rose as a lover instead of a friend and Rose had still been half-heartedly tolerating him. He turned briefly in place for a moment, and saw what Hannibal had been staring at with a certain sense of inevitability: him leaning against a wall, guitar loosely clutched in his hands and a flirtatious smile upon his face. Rose was standing besides him, a slight smile on her own face as her hands busily sketched out matters of science.

He stared at the sight for only a moment, did his hair really have that many grey bits?, before dismissing it as unimportant. He turned aside, and stepped in close to Hannibal and Minou again.

“I’m not staring at him,” Hannibal said moodily, and now that he was properly paying attention he noticed that one of the man’s hands was clutching the fiddle almost hard enough to snap it. “I’m simply watching him, innocently. Can’t one man watch another at a party? Especially when the other is making such a display of it…”

“He’s not making a display of it, he’s simply talking to a woman he likes in a polite and mildly flirtatious manner,” Minou said, and reached out in a businesslike manner to ease Hannibal’s death grip on the instrument he loved so very much. “If it helps at all, he’s probably going to grow awkward in half an hour and stop the flirting. And, if it helps even more, he’s probably going to realize that he doesn’t want to flirt with her at _all_ in under a month and settle back into a far more acceptable friendship.”

Hannibal didn’t even ask how Minou could guess at that information, seeming to trust that she had her ways and that was that. He only eased his grip on his fiddle, just slightly, and stared down at her with unreadable eyes. “Why would that help at all? As I said, glorious goddess, I’m not torturing myself. In fact, I’m not in any sort of pain at all-”

“I know what jealousy is like, Hannibal,” Minou said, quite bluntly. And he was reminded, once again, that just because she was softer than both his mother and Olympe didn’t necessarily mean that she was _soft_. “That business with Henri and Chloe is thankfully resolved now, and entirely to my benefit may I add, but when it was going on… It was horrible, one of the worst things I’ve ever experienced. It eats you up inside, it consumes your every moment, it burns constantly in your chest like you’ve been forced to swallow a still burning coal.”

Hannibal kept staring at her. The man was quite valiantly trying to summon up an expression of confusion on his face, but quite obviously failing. “I’m not jealous of Ben.”

“No, you’re jealous of Rose,” Minou said, not unkindly, and gently squeezed Hannibal’s hands in her own. “You don’t have to hide it. I’ve seen how you look at him for a while now, in the moments when you don’t think he’s paying attention to him. It’s quite sweet, really.”

Hannibal seemed genuinely stunned by that. His jaw popped open, and worked silently for a long few moments. It was the first time he’d ever seen his friend, the ever wordy fiddler, struck speechless.

“You wish that you were in her place, leaning against the wall by his side as he smiled down at you,” Minou continued, staring up at Hannibal with compassionate eyes. “You wish that you could flirt with him openly, dance with him openly, be courted by him for the whole world to see. You wish that he would realize how much you love him, and give you his love in return.”

Hannibal stared at her for another long moment of silence, his face gone ashen, and then snapped his mouth shut and shook his head firmly. “You’re wrong.”

“I’m really not.” Minou sniffed, and in that moment resembled their fearsome mother more than she ever had before. “What I don’t understand is why you don’t go up to him, and tell him how you feel. Ben is open minded, and obviously cares about you to a degree that most actual lovers would envy. He might be shocked if you confessed your love to him, but I really think if you just gave him a bit of time-”

“I don’t want to confess my love to Ben,” Hannibal interrupted her this time, shaking his head in an openly agitated gesture and drawing his hands jerkily away from her grip. “I don’t want to burden him with my feelings. I don’t want to force him to love me, a penniless fiddler who will only break his heart over and over again, in return. I don’t want any of that. _No_.”

Dominique blinked up at him in shock for a long moment, and then firmed her jaw and rose calmly to her feet. “So you just intend to stare at him from across the room forever, a breath away from happiness but unwilling to actually reach out and take it?”

“Happiness isn’t allowed for people like me, Minou. I thought you knew that by now,” Hannibal said softly, shakily. And whipped his fiddle up into position before she could do more than blink, and open her mouth uncertainly. “Now, I think a little music will liven up the room admirably. Don’t you?”

Minou stared at him for another moment, speechless and with tears standing out in her eyes, but Hannibal had already started to play a lively tune. She hesitated for only a moment more, before heaving a heavy sigh and drifting away in a disconsolate manner.

Hannibal continued to play as his eyes tracked around the room, dull and despairing. He seemed to look at all the pretty people, laughing in their pretty clothes, and find nothing but despair. He looked at Minou’s retreating back, and regret shone clear in his eyes. He looked back at the other Ben and Rose, standing so intimately together, and an expression of pure despair passed across his face. He looked and looked and looked...

And looked up, right into his eyes.

A discordant note rang out, and several people in the room glanced over in confused disapproval. They needn’t have worried, Hannibal was already up on his feet, aiming a beatific grin at the room in general as he hurried away as fast as he could with his fiddle still clutched in his hands. “Sincerest of apologies, an unfortunately broken string! I shall be back momentarily!”

He had no option, and no other real desire to tell truth, but to follow Hannibal out of the cottage and down into the rudimentary garden outside.

“You know, I could really do without this today,” Hannibal said, standing at the base of the stairs down into the yard and staring out into the blackness of the night. “I’ve already been humiliated enough as it is, I really could do without suffering further indignities at the hands of a hallucination of my most secret desire. No offence, amicus meus.”

“None taken,” he said generously, and walks around until he can look Hannibal in the face again. “You should know, though, that I agree absolutely with Minou.”

“I expected nothing less,” Hannibal said wearily, and transferred his bow to the hand holding his fiddle so he could rub wearily at his eyes. The man looked, to be perfectly honest, like little better than a corpse in the dim light spilling out into the yard. “It’s not that I’d kill for some peace, but… Well, I’m getting towards the point where I’d commit a bit of light assault for it. Maybe some perjury, just to spice things up.”

“No you wouldn’t. Shaw would sniff you out in an instance, and the thought of how awkward that’d be for everyone involved would put any sane man off immediately,” he said teasingly. And then sighed, and took a slow step further into Hannibal’s orbit. “I don’t mean to humiliate you, or even to ruin your peace. But you should know that he’d have you in an instant, if you just said the word.”

“No he wouldn’t,” Hannibal said heavily, but allowed him to come closer with a shrug of weary indifference. “He, you, is too in love with Rose to ever see somebody like me. And that’s for the best.”

“He’s best friends with Rose, there is a difference,” he argued firmly, daring another slow step closer and another until they were practically standing chest to chest. “Minou was right there too, trust me. It won’t be long until they both realize that they’re better off friends, and become far happier as a result.”

“ _Never shake thy gory locks at me_ ,“ Hannibal quoted wearily, closing his eyes briefly in the face of the onslaught. “You’re ignoring the far more relevant part of the sentence, Ben, just as she did. Even if he does suddenly decide against the fair Rose, which seems a rather stupid decision all things considered, it’s for the best that he never turns his eye to me.”

“Why not?” He asked. Well aware that, despite himself, he was starting to grow angry.

“Why do none of you ever listen?” Hannibal exploded, and then pinched his nose again and drew in a sobbing breath as he obviously fought to master himself. “I am not worthy of his, or your, love. Think of the plantation at Mon Triomphe, think of Mexico, think of the goddamned riverboat. All I am is an aging, drunk, _consumptive_ fiddler who is going to die sooner rather than later. And the thought of dragging him down with me…”

“Maybe he’d want you to drag him down,” he said levelly, and reached up a tentative hand to brush at Hannibal’s greying hair yet again. “Maybe he wouldn’t consider it dragging him down, but rather helping to keep him afloat in a dark sea.”

“ _It is the east, and Benjamin is the sun_ ,” Hannibal whispered softly, startling only slightly at his touch. When he opened his eyes again, they were wide with uncomfortable wonder. “He is the bravest, smartest, kindest man that I have ever met. Why would somebody as wonderful at that want somebody as pathetic as me?”

“Because you’re not pathetic,” he said fiercely, and went so far as to cup Hannibal’s face in both of his hands. “And because he loves you. Because I love you, Hannibal. Because I’ve seen you at your worst, and known how bad it can get, and I love you anyway. No matter what.”

\--

**viii. Lust**

“I love you,” he said, stubborn and forceful to Hannibal’s back.

Hannibal didn’t turn around to face him, didn’t even grace him with a glance. The fiddler only kept marching onwards, the line of his spine stiff and unyielding and utterly discouraging to any further conversation.

Unfortunately, he had spent his entire life making conversation with men who did not wish to say a word to him. He strode after Hannibal in turn, unwilling to let even the wraith of his friend get away. “I know you can hear me, you wouldn’t be so wound up if you couldn’t. I love you, Hannibal.”

Hannibal’s hands clenched briefly into fists, but even this strange and deathly version of him wasn’t a violent man. After a moment he forced himself to ease, drew in a heavy breath - noisy in the bleak silence of the fog - and kept moving onwards at the same fixed place.

“I’ve loved you since the moment I met you,” he continued, stubborn as only a man who had been denied his every right - even the right to think, in the minds of the arrogant Blankittes who had tried to rule him - could be. “And believe me, that’s only the very slightest of exaggerations. It was when you smiled at me the first time, or played me music for the first time, or treated me as an equal for the first time… Or when you never once mentioned dragging me back from the dark, as if you found no shame in my suffering no matter how dire it was.”

Hannibal did cut him a glance then, but it was hardly an encouraging one. It was bleak and helpless, with an edge of pleading as if the man wished he would just realize his folly and walk away from all this.

“And I don’t think that I’m ever going to stop loving you,” he said firmly, denying the request. He had never walked away from Hannibal before, no matter how intense the provocation, and he was hardly inclined to start now after so much had passed between them. “No, that’s not quite right, I _know_ that I’m never going to stop loving you. How could I? It would be like turning away from the sun, depriving myself of the best thing that’s ever happened to me for no reason at all.”

Hannibal was properly staring at him now, his expression still far from encouraging. He looked incredulous, disbelieving at receiving so open a declaration of intent. He looked like he believed, fully and absolutely, that he deserved absolutely nothing of the sort.

“Hannibal.” He took in a deep breath, refused to become discouraged in the face of such disbelief. “You are the bravest-”

“Benjamin, _stop_!” Hannibal finally cried, and spun all the way back around to face him with wide and incredulous eyes. “Stop saying such nice things, stop confessing your love, stop trying to bind yourself eternally to me, just _stop_. How many times do I have to repeat myself? How many times do I have to convince you of the obvious, that I am not in the slightest bit worthy of your love?”

“As many times as you want,” he said grimly, and came to a halt so he could glare at Hannibal in turn. “It won’t make any difference. I love you, Hannibal, and no matter what you - what this place - tries to throw at me I am not going to change my opinion on that.”

“You are seeing something false,” Hannibal cried, seeming genuinely distressed by his insistance. It was a heartrending sight, but he was hardly inclined to give up over this battle. “I am not a good man, Ben, I am not worthy of your love. I am a treacherous fraud who believes in nothing. I am a greedy fool recklessly seeking his own destruction, but still selfish enough to long for impossible things in the middle of it. I am so much worse than you.”

“I know all your flaws, you’ve shown me all of them quite comprehensively,” he said gently, and dared to reach out one hand to try and brush Hannibal’s overlong hair away from his delicate face. “And I do not believe that you are any worse than me, I do not believe that you’re a bad person in any way. I don’t care what you’ve done, or what you think of yourself. I just care for you.”

“I’m exactly the kind of man you should hate,” Hannibal said, shying away from him with eyes still so wide and panicked. “I am just as bad as everybody else who has ever tried to hold you down, to repress you, to make you nothing. You should cast me away without another thought, instead of clinging to me so desperately.”

“I disagree,” he said, firmer than ever in the face of Hannibal’s panic.

“You shouldn’t,” Hannibal said, and drew in a deep breath and took another step backwards into the swirling fog. “Because at the end of the day, I would put my own interest over yours every single time.”

“Hannibal, we both know for a fact that that’s untrue-” He said desperately, stubbornly. Was unable to stop himself from reaching out once again, from trying to take the fiddler into his arms and soothe away all of his hurts.

“Do we?” Hannibal asked, and his coffee dark eyes grew bitter and sad once again as he stepped back fully into the fog. “ _The carnal malefactors were condemned, who reason subjugate to appetite._ ”

“Hannibal-!”

He wasn’t interrupted by a familiar voice, but rather a low and familiar moan that echoed around him almost tauntingly. 

He was standing in a familiar attic room, one that he’d entered a thousand times and snuck out from a thousand more. If pressed he could have probably pointed out every single detail of the space: the window that had been broken many times, the cracked floorboards, the suspicious strain spreading across the ceiling, the threadbare bed lying right in the centre…

He could’ve pointed out all the details, could’ve catalogued them in meticulous detail, but there were far more important things to do and see. Namely the man lying in the centre of the bed, his long hair spread out around him like a glorious halo.

The moan had been in a familiar voice, but he hadn’t fully appreciated that Hannibal could make such a sound until he saw the man in the throes of pleasure. Hannibal was lying naked in the middle of the bed, the blankets kicked to the floor in the midst of what was obviously the last hot summer before his death. His skin gleamed with sweat in the low light that filtered in from the cracked window, and his chest heaved with exertion.

He had always thought Hannibal attractive, had found himself dwelling on the fact many times over the nights of their acquaintance and had found it steadily harder over the years of their friendship to hold himself back from acting on that beauty, but the word seemed hardly enough to describe how he looked without a single stitch to cover him. Hannibal was slim and delicate, with sparse hair on his chest and gloriously red nipples and a certain giddy life in his movements that couldn’t help but captivate the eye. Most important of all, the man’s cock stood out hard and ready between his legs; a little thinner and shorter than his, but flushed so red with his pleasure that neither of those facts really seemed to matter.

Why had he ever held himself back from his attraction to Hannibal? It had obviously been the act of a fool. He took a step closer to the bed, breathless and dry mouthed at the beautiful sight.

One of Hannibal’s hands was wrapped around his cock, and the other one was lying lax on his chest. The man was obviously taking a brief break, had just as obviously driven himself right to the edge and was now pausing to make the eventual pleasure all the sweeter. He had often imagined gleefully torturing Hannibal in such a way, and it was satisfying to see that this was a dream they’d happily shared in.

He took another step closer, wondering if he should announce his presence and if so _how_ , and it was at that glorious moment that Hannibal moved into action again. A display somehow even more glorious than the sight of him lying still.

Hannibal tightened his hand around his cock again, and started to move it at a slow and torturous pace. It was as if he was teasing himself, determined to slowly build the flow of pleasure instead of driving himself to a quick and violent conclusion. Hannibal had always been a patient man, a man more content to wait than to act. He had never appreciated that quality quite as much as in that moment.

At the same time he realized that Hannibal wasn’t just idly resting his hand on his chest, letting it rest while his other hand did all the work. A moment after his other hand tightened around his cock again Hannibal lifted it, glided it across sweat slick skin and let his fingers touch one red nipple. The man simply held it for a moment, almost as if he was appreciating the texture, and then very slowly started to roll it between his delicate fingers.

He had always been fascinated by Hannibal’s hands, their soft skin and their long fingers. He drew in a deep, awe-struck breath - loud enough that he wondered at Hannibal not hearing it, even through his distraction - and took another stumbling step towards the bed. It only seemed right, to try and appreciate such a work of art from up close.

Hannibal seemed unconscious of the perusal, or of his status as a work of art. He started moving his hand quicker, obviously at the point where the line between teasing and torture became rather more narrow than at first predicted. The man tightened his grip, harder and harder, until he must have been on the point of pain but didn’t seem to mind the pressure a single bit. He supposed it wasn’t that much of a surprise, Hannibal always had been somewhat of a masochist.

Almost in unison, yet again, Hannibal started treating his nipples more roughly. While before he had seemed content to play with the one nub in his grasp, now the man got properly down to business. Hannibal pinched his nipple between his fingers, hard enough that a low gasp was drawn from his throat and he found himself involuntarily wincing in sympathy. The man then eased for a moment, again seeming fond of teasing the edge instead of just rushing up to it, and then pinched again even harder than before and drew an even louder groan as a result.

He took another quick, and somehow silent, step towards the bed. The sight of Hannibal torturing himself was surprisingly erotic, a vision that would probably be playing out in his dreams for years to come if they ever both got out of this place, but he couldn’t help the urge to step in and turn this session into a far different thought of thing. To replace those pinching fingers with his own worshipful tongue, to replace that harsh hand with his own far gentler grip, to lower his body over Hannibal and treat the man with all the softness that he so sorely deserved.

Of course, that was a purely selfish urge based on his own preferences. Hannibal, for his part, seemed perfectly happy with a far rougher pace. He was properly up to speed now, his hand moving as fast as possible on his cock. It must have been right on the point of pain, but Hannibal seemed to care even less than he had before. A constant litany of moans was coming from his throat, his eyes were closed and his body shuddered with every single harsh stroke.

The man’s hand on his nipples hardly seemed inclined to ease the pace either. It pinched the initial nipple, the one now bright red and slightly puffy looking from the harsh treatment, one last time and then swapped quickly to the other one. There was no toying this time, no gentle tease designed to build up the pressure slowly. Instead Hannibal tightened his grip to a pinch right away, used his tender flesh mercilessly and with a certain harsh joy.

He took another faltering step closer to the bed, and then another until he was standing with his knees practically pressing against the edge of the threadbare old mattress. He had the feeling that he was about to witness something special, something utterly unique and precious. He wanted to witness this moment. He wanted to immortalize it in his memory forever, hold it close as a gloriously shining star even if it had nothing to do with him.

And then Hannibal swallowed, hard enough that he both saw the bob of the man’s throat and heard the click of it in the otherwise silent room, and moaned, “ _Ben_ ,” loud enough that it echoed off the walls.

He couldn’t really remember what he did, at that point. He thought that he froze in place, staring down at the utterly perfect sight with a strange mixture of joy and abject longing. He might have just stared, he might have blinked, he might have made a noise low or loud or passionate enough to wake the dead. He really wasn’t paying any attention, the sight of Hannibal - Hannibal breathing _his_ name - was far too glorious to pay any attention to anything else.

Whatever he did, though, it must’ve stirred the air of the room in some way. Hannibal stirred fitfully on the pillow, drew in a heaving breath and sluggishly blinked open his coffee dark eyes to stare dazedly at the cracked and stained ceiling…

And instead looked up, right into his eyes.

He would’ve expected the man to scream, or at least to spin away from the intruder in the room, but as ever he was a fool to expect anything so ordinary from a man such as Hannibal. Instead the man only blinked at him, and then gave a slow and dazed smile and lapsed bonelessly back against the pillow once again. “ _Oh_.”

“Hannibal,” he murmured, breathless, and settled slowly on the bed besides the man. So very close, to warm and sweat slicked skin that he wanted to worship with everything that he had in him. “Have I ever told you quite how beautiful you are?”

“Mm, not exactly.” Hannibal gave him a drowsy smile, the one that always hit him like the sweetest possible fist in the gut, and went back to moving his hand slowly on his cock. “Which is probably for the best, really, as you are a figment of my imagination. It would be rather strange, if I myself stood in front of a mirror all day and held myself up as some kind of Adonis.”

“Not that strange, it’s only the truth,” he said, well aware that he sounded absolutely awestruck, and reached out to replace Hannibal’s delicate hand with his own… But no, that was where his luck ran out and his hand glided almost all the way through. “Damn.”

Hannibal gave him a strange look for that, and then a husky laugh. His hand had spasmed briefly, painfully to any other person, but otherwise he seemed little inclined to stall or even slow his pace. “I would’ve thought that a hallucination would know about their own inability to join in. Really, you should be used to this kind of thing by now.”

“Perhaps, but I’m never going to stop wanting to touch you,” he said, casting aside his disappointment, and stretched himself out alongside Hannibal on the threadbare bed instead. He was bitter about his apparent insubstantiality, at least when it came to Hannibal himself, but it had some uses on the subject of two fully grown men sharing a tiny space barely big enough for one. “Talk to me instead, tell me what you’re dreaming of.”

“ _Who_ I’m dreaming of,” Hannibal corrected, gave a full body shudder as he completed another stroke of his cock. “And shouldn’t that be obvious, amicus meus? My mind only ever summons one person to situations such as these, at least these days.”

He’d known that Hannibal was dreaming of him, at least from that first groan of his name and quite possibly from even before that, but it was still a thrill to hear it said out loud. He found himself watching the man even more hungrily than before: watching his sweat slicked chest, the flash of his nipple through his pinching fingers, his hand moving so steadily and so torturously on his cock.

“Can you roll your fingers instead of pinching them, for me?” He asked, and drew in a deep and hungry breath as Hannibal blinked at him for only a moment before lazily obeying the command. “You really are beautiful, Hannibal. I don’t know why you do this privately, instead of inviting others to witness the show.”

“You expect me to display myself on the stairs of the Cabildo, perhaps? To fuck myself for anyone and everyone to see?” Hannibal teased him, but kept up the slow and rolling motion of his fingertips and seemed to enjoy the sensation immensely. “I appreciate the filthiness of your mind, the filthiness of my own mind truth be told, but that seems one of the quickest ways to a long jail sentence with a possible hanging at the end.”

“Soften your grip on your cock, too. Let me see it,” he ordered, slightly startled at his own daring. And was even more startled, when Hannibal didn’t even hesitate before changing his grip and displaying himself far more readily. “And I wasn’t talking about anyone and everyone, no. I don’t think I’m a jealous man, but even I have limits.”

“Oh, you have _limits_.” Hannibal sent him an openly flirtatious glance, one that made him curse his inability to touch afresh. The man’s long hand kept moving on his cock; now putting on a show, dragging slowly to expose the flushed red head and the precome that pooled there. “Tell me about them, so I can go over them and you can make me _suffer_ for it.”

“Spread your legs, let me see you,” he whispered, and made a choked sound of his own as Hannibal readily opened for him with a seductive smirk. “And I would never punish you, unless we both wanted it. No, I am only talking about the fact that maybe you should invite Ben to be here in person to appreciate the sight of you.”

Hannibal… Hannibal froze up, utterly and completely. His hands remained on his chest and on his cock, his legs remained open like an offering, but his coffee dark eyes went dark and his face went absolutely still. The man stared up at him with an openly betrayed expression, his chest heaving with agitation now instead of arousal. “Why… Why would you say something like that, why would you ruin it when I’m this close?”

“I’m not trying to ruin it,” he said, trying to keep his tone level in the face of the betrayed look that Hannibal was piercing him with. “I’m just telling you the truth. If you invited the actual Ben to witness this, to participate, he would appreciate the sight just as much as me.”

“He would hate me,” Hannibal disagreed, starting to shudder a little with the force of unpleasant emotion. “He would be disgusted. He would turn from me, as he _should_ do, and I would never see him again and I would have thrown the only good thing in my life out of the window for _nothing_.”

“Why would he hate you?” He challenged, pushing up on one elbow so he could stare right into Hannibal’s terribly confused eyes. “Why would he ever turn from you, when you’re offering him this? He would greet you with open arms, Hannibal. He would love you in the way that you so sorely deserve to be loved.”

“I do not deserve to be loved!” Hannibal cried, and to his shock he finally saw the hard sparkle of tears standing out in his beloved friend’s eyes. “I do not deserve anything of his. He is the sun, and what am I? I am a wasted man soon for death. I am selfish, and traitorous, and dishonest and untrue. I ruin every single thing that I touch, and sap all joy from the world. I am _nothing_ -”

“No!” He interrupted harshly, and leaned forward until they were practically nose to nose. “No, you are everything. If I am the sun, then you are the one reason why the sun keeps shining. You are brave, and smart, and true. You are the one person I would walk through hell for, again and again. You are the song that always lifts my spirits. You are _you_ , Hannibal, and I would never have you any other way.”

Hannibal blinked at him, and then let out a soft sob and curled on his side towards him. “Ben. _Ben_. I love you so much, you know that?”

“Almost as much as I love you,” he said tenderly, hopefully, as he curled his insubstantial body around Hannibal’s weak form and held on as tight as he could.

“You really shouldn’t-”

“I will always be here for you,” he whispered, and leant in until his lips were as close to pressing against Hannibal’s forehead as he could possibly manage. “I will always care for you, I will always want you, and I will _always_ love you. Nothing is ever going to change that, Hannibal, _ever_.”

And Hannibal shuddered against him, and came with a gloriously sobbing breath.

\--

**ix. The Core**

When he blinked open his eyes again it was to thick fog, and not a glimpse of the wraith Hannibal. He was all alone, standing in dank and oppressive silence that pressed up against him like an entirely unpleasant physical presence.

Nonetheless, he stubbornly opened his mouth again. "Did you hear what I said?"

Silence, echoing and endless. He hadn't been alone like this in all his life. Not in childhood, with all the other slave children packed far too close around. Not in Paris, where there'd always been fine society easy to find. Not even in New Orleans, where his 'lesser' status had been made abundantly clear but the free coloured community had still warmly embraced him anyway. The closest he'd ever come to this was just after Ayesha's death.

"Did you hear me?" He repeated, and took a stubborn step forward through the fog. It was like moving through treacle, but still he persisted. "It doesn't matter, Hannibal, I still love you."

The silence remained, oppressive and absolute as he trudged through it but there was a different quality to it now. An expectant quality, as if it expected him to pour his entire heart out and allow him to watch. 

Good for the silence, that was what he wanted to do anyway. "I don't care if you lust after me in the basest of ways, I lust after you too. I don't care if you get jealous when I flirt with others, when you display your ample charms I get a bit jealous too. I don't care… Well, I do care if you want to do violence to yourself, but it in no way lessens my opinion of you; I am happy to hold your hand, to hold you until the darkness goes away. I don't care if you want to bury your head in a thousand bottles, I will be there when you emerge again. I don't care if you don't believe in anything, I can believe enough for the both of us. I don't care if you lied about your name and past, you didn't lie about who you really were. I don't care if you left your family for their own good, I think it was an act of immeasurable bravery that brought you into my life. I don't care! "

His passion echoed in the thick fog, and then faded to nothing. He was left all alone again, striding through thick fog with nothing in front of him and nothing behind him.

"I only care about you, " he whispered, and finally came to a halt. Closed his eyes, and tried desperately to breath through the weight in his chest. "I love you, Hannibal, and nothing in the world is going to change that. "

"...Ben?"

The breath caught in his chest, and he turned very slowly. To his utter shock Hannibal was standing there, in the fog. Not the ghost Hannibal, not the wraith that was alternately cool and angry, but the real Hannibal. The man was pale and shaky looking, yes, but undeniably himself. He would’ve recognized that greying moustache anywhere, that long hair, those soulful eyes that he could stare into forever and ever and never once get sick of.

“Ben,” Hannibal repeated as he simply stared in awe, and took a slow and staggering step towards him. “Ben, is that really you? Forgive me for asking, Amicus Meus, but this is a terribly strange place and I’m never quite sure if I’m dreaming or if…”

“It’s real,” he finished, unsurprised to find himself a touch breathless, and took one stumbling step towards his lost love and then another. “Hannibal, it’s _real_.”

He took Hannibal into his arms, and dragged the man into a kiss so passionate that the world could’ve been burning down around them and neither of them would’ve noticed. Hannibal tensed against him for a long moment, out of what he judged to be shock more than anything, but then melted into the embrace with a desperate enthusiasm that made heat flare in his stomach. They kissed for a long few moments, and in those moments he only noticed the softness of Hannibal’s hair and the lingering warmth of his body and the ever so sweet taste of his lips.

“That… Was unexpected,” Hannibal said, when they were finally forced to part for lack of air, and stared up at him wonderingly with wide eyes and bruised lips. “Not unwelcome, Amica Mea, but unexpected.”

“I’ve been wanting to do that for years, and never once summoned up the courage,” he informed Hannibal breathlessly, keeping the man firmly within the circle of his arms. He doubted that he would ever let Hannibal go after this, would be perfectly happy to keep him close and safe forevermore. “And then all of this happened, and now it seems pointless to hold myself back any longer.”

“‘All of this’...?” Hannibal frowned at him, those coffee dark eyes tracking over his body in their usual perceptive way. “The journey to fetch me wasn’t easy, I see.”

“It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life,” he said, absolutely honestly, and gave Hannibal a smile that made the fiddler stare and blush a shade of bright red that he’d never seen before. “And one of the most worthy. How could it not be, after all, when you are standing here with me?”

“You shouldn’t have come if it was that difficult,” Hannibal said softly, and frowned at him despite the blush. “You shouldn’t have come at all. Ben, I know it is the height of bad manners to do this now, but… I’m really not worthy. You should’ve turned your mind away from me, stopped wasting your time-”

“You are never a waste of time,” he said fiercely, and moved his hands briefly up to cup Hannibal’s face in an intimate caress. “You are one of the best things that has ever happened to me. You are the absolute best man that I know and, Hannibal, I would walk through hell a thousand times just to catch a glimpse of you and make sure that you were safe.”

“That-” Hannibal swallowed hard, looked at him with the shine of happy tears in his eyes. “I don’t know why you said it, but that’s one of the nicest things that anybody has ever said to me.”

“I said it because it’s the truth,” he informed Hannibal firmly, and swiped a thumb across the man’s cheekbone just to chase the somehow still growing flush on his flesh. “I said it because you deserve it. When we get back to life, I will happily lie in bed for the next year and attempt to convince you with every skill I have.”

“I really don’t think-”

“You have seen me at my worst, and you still love me. I have seen you at your worst, and I still love you,” he said softly, and if he had worried for even half a second that Hannibal would turn away from him now the fear was immediately assuaged by the way that Hannibal shuddered and gave a dry sob and melted into his arms. “ _Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove._ ”

“ _O no, it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken_ ,” Hannibal finished the quote shakily, and stared up at him with tear filled eyes that shone with wonder. “Oh, _Ben_.”

“Let’s go home,” he said softly, and bent to kiss Hannibal one more time before turning and starting to lead him back.


End file.
